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Thank heaven for March Madness! We've waded through enough hype to get to the NCAA Tournament, which means office pools for all and final exams for the storied NBA draft class of 2014, showing who will become whom.

Embiid, who didn't touch a basketball until he was 12 in his native Cameroon, is not only big and athletic but a prodigy, learning by leaps and bounds. Says one GM: "His ceiling is Hakeem Olajuwon. His basement is Serge Ibaka."

Unfortunately for all involved, Embiid missed the Big 12 Tournament and isn't expected back for Kansas' game(s) this weekend, with his "back sprain" rediagnosed as a stress fracture, amid speculation that his family may caution him not to hurry back and endanger a professional career.

Perspective is an ever more quaint concept. This much-hyped class is a long way from historic ones that got less attention like the pre-internet Class of 1984 (Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, Charles Barkley, John Stockton) or even the pre-social-networks Class of 2003 (LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh). If James was the most-hyped prep ever--and, amazingly lived up to it--the 2002-03 NBA season droned by with little attention to the teams doing all the losing or anything like ESPN's current "tanking rankings."

This is the point in the process that the questions get answerered, one way or the other. If the college season counts for, say, 33% of a prospect's ranking, the NCAA Tournament can count for as much as 33% by itself, with the pre-draft camps circuit counting for the rest.

In the NBA, only scouts and some GMs watch the college season. Everyone watches the NCAA Tournament, incuding the people the GMs and scouts fear most in the world, their owners.

It's not fair to put so much on a few games but for college commentators bemoaning the expectations, the job description of these young players' chosen profession is "step up or else." (Wiggins has already said he'll enter the 2014 draft; for the others, the only question has historically been when, not if).

Modest as Wiggins' accomplishments at KU have been, he gets superstar scrutiny as a result of his peculiar fame. If James' high school career was pre-social network (Facebook launched a year later in 2004), Wiggins has been called "the first Youtube phenom." One mixtape of his high school career has gotten more than 4,000,000 hits.

With sneaker sales pegged to the taste of the teens following Wiggins, Nike and Adidas were reportedly preparing for the first bidding war since LeBron. Industry sources threw out crazy numbers like $180 million, which would more than double Bron's $80 million Nike deal in 2003.

Not surprisingly, the media/commercial frenzy poured over the Class of 2014, leading to out-sized expectations. Wiggins looked like a deer in the headlights, but has sprung to life. He now drives all the way to the basket, which may sound basic but looked too scary for him to venture until recently, obliging me to acknowledge that ESPN's Chad Ford's stalwart defense wasn't "The Emperor's New Clothes," after all.

It remains to be seen how much of Wiggins' cachet remains or how good he'll be with similar-looking prospects having become Tracy McGrady (almost great), Paul George (trying to reach greatness), Rudy Gay (with third team as they pass around his $19 million salary), DeMar DeRozan (just became an All-Star) and Marvin Williams (maybe the Hawks should have taken Chris Paul).

Parker must step up dramatically enough to make up for questions about his tweener size. Randle must show he can score (a mid-range game would help). Oklahoma State's Marcus Smart, who does everything else, must show shooting range and not go after any more yahoos in the crowd. Arizona's self-effacing power forward, Aaron Gordon could call his own number more as well as growing some, even if he can't do it all in the next three weeks.